Taken from Bank of England report
Terry Ettam
I'm not sure about you, but the last thing I want to talk about is the election. When I think about how much precious time I've wasted listening to politics in the last year, I want to puke. There are no longer voices of pollsters, commentators or statisticians.
Well, maybe I want to talk about the statistician, like there's an old joke about the statistician, the guy who drowned because he waded in a river that was only three feet deep on average. Look, isn’t this already better than politics? However, while drowning statisticians may be entertaining, there is a serious side to the problem of relying on averages. First, you can actually die.
Before going back to death and/or politics again (redundant, I know), let's consider the use of averages. Cars may be designed for ordinary people – people aren't going to find the tallest man on earth and design the interior to suit them. The exceptions either tap their calves or shake their feet, but that's how it has to be.
In other areas, this doesn't work. Do you insulate your home under normal conditions? No, of course not. Are you installing the air conditioner under normal conditions? Same. Just go on like this. When the risk of injury rises, we design for the extremes, not the average. Or we should.
If your plan is based on the average, but you cannot tolerate extremes, the world will be full of trouble. Or even a big change. Europe and other energy progressive countries around the world are discovering this the hard way.
Wind and solar power dominate the race to decarbonize the energy system. Nuclear energy is widely scorned. Hydrogen has potential, but is still a long way from being a major player. Assuming hydrocarbons must be used at any cost, wind and solar are the winners. Bringing in trillions. Wind turbines are being thrown everywhere. Cover the countryside with solar panels.
The media loves to make headlines about wattage; big numbers can dazzle people. “The U.S. will install record amounts of wind and solar this year, underscoring the nation’s ability to build renewable energy at levels once thought impossible… The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that the U.S. will install 37 gigawatts of new wind energy this year And solar installation capacity. Wow, gigawatts. Not sure what those are, but that sounds big.
Is there anything wrong with such a large capacity? Well, how good is that? Let's see… At a 33% capacity factor (which the US government uses is apparently reasonable), on average, 37 GW contributes just over 12 GW of electricity to the grid. The assumption at the time seemed to be that 12 gigawatts of dirty old hydrocarbons was obsolete, and to energy rednecks that number was even more reasonable 37 gigawatts because, you know, some days it was really windy everywhere.
But what happens when the load factor is zero? Because it happened.
The current representative of this problem is the United Kingdom. UK wind power installation capacity is 24 GW. The media likes to talk about total renewable energy installations as proof of progress and how fast the energy transition is happening.
However, over the past few weeks, wind power has dropped to almost zero, and the 24 GW installation capacity has dropped to about 1 or 2 GW.
Normally, this wouldn't be a problem – just fire up a gas-fired power plant, or import electricity from elsewhere.
But what happens if it's not available?
More relevant, what happens when the likelihood of output approaching zero coincides with the time when power is most needed (a heat wave or cold snap)? This brings us to the dire situation Europe is currently facing during the winter. Natural gas storage should be filling up quickly this time of year, but for a number of reasons, this is not the case.
Natural gas shouldn’t be on anyone’s road map, though. Fashion and culture website Wired (early September) spoke of the need to limit global warming: “To make this transition, we need to immediately switch to renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal energy. We are making good progress on this Progress; Solar and wind power are now cheaper than fossil fuels, and renewables accounted for about a third of global electricity generation in 2020. The first glimmers of the damage caused by reliance on averages are beginning to appear.
A few weeks later, Wired suggested that some lightbulbs might have turned on: “The administration is leaning toward saying the power sector is done, that the sector has been decarbonized, that the renewable energy transition is picking up pace, and that's all good stuff,” The article quoted the head of the UK Department of Energy.
The author of the article, after reflecting on the fact that seven UK energy supply companies have collapsed so far this year (due to costs of generating/obtaining electricity higher than their locked-in sales value), makes one of those profound British understatements: “My arm was Cut off, I seem to be in trouble for the old guy” Variety: “Our dependence on gas is more widespread than we think, no, damn fools, we are more than that. you idea. Anyone in the energy supply industry can tell you this, but the stupid army won't listen. Now you pay.
They can easily ask experts, such as suppliers of hydrocarbons. But those people are the lepers of today. No one was interested in their opinions for fear of appearing cooperative. (Trudeau has set up a “Net Zero Advisory Body” tasked with defining a path to net zero; NZAB has released minutes of meetings to date(24); only one mention of “oil and gas” is mentioned in the minutes—once) , the background is dumbfounding: “Members received a basic briefing on the oil and gas industry from federal officials.” At the same time, NZAB also heard directly from the David Suzuki Foundation.
Let's get all those people who, as Principal Skinner said to The Simpsons, “scowl in vain to try to understand the situation” better understand this energy conundrum.
The world has been sold a flawed bill of goods based on a simplistic view of how renewable energy works. The U.S. government website highlights the problem with this example: “The average turbine capacity in the U.S. Wind Turbine Database is 1.67 megawatts (MW). At a 33% capacity factor, the turbines generate an average of more than 402,000 kWh per month – Enough for more than 460 average American households.
So the bureaucrats and idiots armed themselves went straight to the Promised Land and surprised themselves by increasing the number of wind turbines by 460. OMG we don't need gas anymore (as they told me in these words).
So they all set out to dismantle the natural gas system—not directly by tearing down the pipes, but indirectly by blocking new ones, advocating for the “fossil fuel divestment movement,” and listening to energy policy advice from Swedish teenagers—and then stood shivering in the dim light. . When the winds stop and the world's energy producers can't produce more gas, they slip into a coma.
It's not just Britain that's uneasy. A Bloomberg article (which I can’t link to because I would never give Bloomberg a penny) points out the following disturbing news: “China is facing another winter of power shortages as global energy supplies tighten. The world's second-largest economy faces the risk of not having enough coal and natural gas, used to heat homes and power factories, despite growing competition over the past year as rivals in North Asia and Europe compete for supplies. Limited supply and efforts to store fuel.
It’s very important to realize that these comments come from Bloomberg – a “news” organization that goes out of its way to demonize, belittle and destroy the hydrocarbon industry. By the way, the hydrocarbon industry is making significant progress in ways these demonizers thought were possible – developing carbon capture/storage, reducing methane emissions, researching hydrogen solutions, and even achieving successes in Aboriginal inclusion, such as projects As evidenced by groups like Reconciliation (which tried to buy TransMountain) and the recent purchase of an oil sands pipeline by 8 local First Nations and Suncor. The same hydrocarbon industry is working hard to address emissions and engage First Nations.
Much of the insanity of the current global energy transition stems from a basic inability to understand certain fundamentals, which are not difficult to understand if one is so inclined, but for those who need energy villains to add righteousness to their ,it's out of the question. You can install all the wind and solar you want, but can their output drop to zero, and more importantly, are their outputs more likely to be available when needed most (extreme heat (low wind), inefficient solar cells panels) or zero in extreme cold) (low wind, obvious disadvantages of solar)), then you have no energy system at all. And don't raise your hands and say batteries are coming soon. The math as a replacement for NG is even more ridiculous.
Yes, yes, I've heard it, how terrible it is to come down so hard on a bunch of hapless bandwagon commentators. Yes, about that. This trend is cutting off the world's fuel supply. There will be consequences. Seriously.
It's not particularly funny that hundreds of millions of people don't have enough heating fuel in the middle of winter. If the cold winter comes, all the happiest energy transition dogs will disappear into the woodwork, away from the disinformation they spread and the disasters they create. The men and women in charge have no choice but to say out loud what they have been afraid to say for a decade: You need hydrocarbons, today, tomorrow, and long into the future. So start acting like this.
Get it while it's still legal! Before the book starts burning…pick up “The End of Fossil Fuel Madness”: Amazon Canada, indigo.caor amazon.com. Thank you for your support.
Relevant
